The designer opens up about taking over the reigns at Boss.

"They're here for her," says designer Jason Wu of the cluster of paparazzi that's begun to form around our Harper's Bazaar photo shoot in Manhattan's West Village. The "her" in question is model Hilary Rhoda, who at 5-foot-11 (plus heels) towers over Wu in a metal-embroidered dress from his Fall 2015 collection for Boss, Hugo Boss's premium line. Even today, dressed in a tuxedo, Wu, who was named artistic director of Boss womenswear in 2013, doesn't look all that different than he did eight years ago, when he dropped out of fashion school at Parsons to start his namesake company. But his youthful appearance belies all he has accomplished: At the age of 32, Wu has already established himself as a serious designer, having famously dressed First Lady Michelle Obama for her husband's 2009 inauguration, as well as overseeing his own growing label. Now, for the 91-year-old German-based Hugo Boss, he has been charged with breathing new life into one of Europe's biggest fashion brands.

To get the irresistible Boss puns out of the way: Wu didn't watch the '80s sitcom Who's the Boss? He is, however, in agreement with Sheryl Sandberg that we should ban the word "bossy." And he hasn't had any terrible bosses because, until this latest gig, he has been his own boss—and, in the words of hip-hop sage Rick Ross, is "like a boss" in every way.

But Wu didn't know what he was in for when he showed up at New York's Gansevoort hotel for his first encounter with Boss's top brass. In fact, he didn't even know who he was meeting. "I'd been told it was a European company," Wu says. When Chief Brand Officer Christoph Auhagen arrived and broached the proposition of hiring him to design for Boss, he was floored. "I was like, 'Why me?' " he says. "It seemed like the oddest match. I thought of Boss as a menswear brand, and I wasn't super knowledgeable about the women's side, which is only 15 years old." That perception was in part what Wu was brought on to change. Six months of meetings, three visits to Boss HQ's "campus" in the town of Metzingen (which Wu describes as "like the set of the movie Gattaca"), and one conversation with longtime friend Diane Kruger later, Wu decided to throw his lot in with the company. "I asked Diane's opinion before I took the job," he recalls. "Diane said, 'I think you should take it; it has a lot of potential. You should do something interesting with it.' "

Since showing his first Boss collection in February of last year, Wu has been working tirelessly to put his stamp on the brand. That has involved updating the Hugo Boss oeuvre with pieces like the slinky midi-length slipdresses he showed for fall while maintaining the consistency its customers rely on. "I think I bring an outside point of view and am able to pick out what I think is really amazing and express that," he says. "Sometimes when you see things every day, you don't see how amazing they are." Hugo Boss's CEO, Claus-Dietrich Lahrs, for one, has been impressed by Wu's ability to integrate his own ideas into his work for the Boss label as he also reinforces and enhances the brand's identity. "Jason is a true cosmopolitan," Lahrs says. "He has a keen eye and the ability to hit the nail on the head without ever losing sight of the commercial aspect."

Though Wu flies to Germany every month, his German is "still terrible," he says. ("I know when people are talking about me," he adds.) He also has yet to fully come to terms with the national cuisine. (The company cafeteria has named the off-the-menu, American-style prosciutto-and-cheese sandwich that he always requests after him.) Nevertheless, Wu has immersed himself in the Boss universe, and in his two years there has seen his sphere of influence grow. "This year I took on more responsibilities," he says. "Men's fragrance, eyewear, watches, retail concepts—basically all the categories." Wu says that it's all in service of a concerted effort to give Hugo Boss an overarching theme and "the polish and consistency that an international brand needs on every platform, from the airport perfume counter to our concessions at Saks and Harrods."

Case in point: Boss's new Bespoke handbag, in stores in July. The style evokes the house's renowned reputation for tailoring, and the cuff-link-inspired hardware is meant to connect the women's line with the brand's menswear origins. But it's also a crucial first step in building Boss's accessories repertoire, which Wu describes as "an area of great potential." "We have a huge accessories department in Switzerland that's amazing," he explains. "They even have a little robot that mows the lawn." It's important to him that people understand that the Boss DNA goes beyond suits. "We're known for menswear, we're known for tailoring, but there's so much more," says Wu, pointing to the company's involvement in sports, including its sponsorship of last year's World Cup–winning soccer team. Does Wu himself have a jock side? "I'm terrible at sports, but I can appreciate it," he says, laughing. "I was on the ski patrol at one point at my boarding school in Massachusetts."

Another part of Wu's task is to define the Boss woman, whom he describes as "sophisticated but also strong." The actresses Kate Bosworth, Nicola Peltz, Dakota Johnson, Kruger, and Julianne Moore are just a handful of the women he's recruited to draw attention to the brand. "She's so poised," Wu says of Moore, who sat front row at his show just four days before her Academy Awards victory in February. "The day after the show I flew to L.A. to shoot the campaign, and on awards night I went to a party, and she let me hold her Oscar. I asked if it was filled with chocolate." Then there are models like Rhoda, Amber Valletta, Edie Campbell, and Abbey Lee Kershaw, the last of whom appeared in the spring campaign. "She's a really cool person with the right spirit—a total girlboss."

For all the frenzy, power, and cultural grid-skipping of his new gig, though, Wu is still true to Wu. "We were shooting in Times Square yesterday, and I was thinking, People don't dress up so much anymore," he observes. "But at Hugo Boss they do. All of the guys are always in suits, supersharp. If Hilary [Rhoda] and I were in tuxes on the Hugo Boss campus, we wouldn't look out of place. But I have not changed my sneakers. I remain me. I get my hands dirty; I need to be on the floor pinning. It's like a triathlon when I'm there." And what kind of boss is he? "Collaborative," Wu asserts. "A brand is about creating a world. It's a work in progress."

This article originally appeared in the June/July 2015 issue of Harper's BAZAAR.

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